


and the silence rings (like a cathedral bell)

by sourcheeks



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Punisher (Comics)
Genre: 1970s, M/M, Neighbors, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25892854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sourcheeks/pseuds/sourcheeks
Summary: The apartment is dark. Frank hears Murdock move up behind him before the lights turn on. It’s a small, sparse apartment, not unlike Frank’s own, though he suspects he and Murdock have different motives for the lack of decor.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Matt Murdock
Comments: 17
Kudos: 79





	1. Chapter 1

Frank’s neighbor was struggling with his door, trying to wrestle with several bags of groceries, a white cane, and his keys. Frank pocketed his mail and approached him, dragging his feet loudly to let the blind guy know he had company. “Hey, you need some help, buddy?”

“Oh, thank you.” The neighbor smiled vaguely in his direction while Frank grabbed his grocery bags. “I’m very sorry, I don’t recognize your voice.”

“You wouldn’t. Just moved in. Frank Castle.”

“Frank Castle,” his neighbor repeated, unlocking his apartment door and allowing Frank inside. “Nice to meet you, Mister Castle. I’m Matt Murdock.”

The apartment is dark. Frank hears Murdock move up behind him before the lights turn on. It’s a small, sparse apartment, not unlike Frank’s own, though he suspects he and Murdock have different motives for the lack of decor. 

“Kitchen is just there, ten paces to the left. But I’m pretty sure our apartments have the same layout, so you already know that.” Murdock passes around him, grabbing one of the brown paper bags. “Do you help all your neighbors with their groceries, or just the helpless cripples?” There’s no bitterness to the words. Murdock’s tone is light, and he has an affable smile. 

Frank grunted, noncommittal. “Just help people it looks like need helping.” 

“That’s a good attitude, I like that attitude.” Murdock starts to unpack his groceries. Frank joins him, surprised at the ease with which Murdock moves around him in the small kitchen despite not being able to see him. “World could use more people who think that way. God knows that New York could.”

“You can say that again.” Frank scoffed bitterly. 

Murdock grabbed two bottles from the fridge. "A drink in exchange for your time?"

Frank nodded, then felt like an asshole. "Yeah, thanks." He accepted one of the bottles, sitting with Murdock on the couch. "Move around real good for a blind guy."

Matt laughed. "Well, I live here. It's a familiar space. You should see me trying to walk down the street."

Frank laughs before he can stop himself. "That's what happened to your lip?" 

Murdock's lip was cracked, a dark red scab running along it. His hand flitted up to touch it. "Yeah. Tripped taking out the trash."

“You should be more careful.” Frank cupped Murdock’s jaw, inspecting his wound. 

Murdock’s lips quirked up. “How old are your kids?”

Frank froze, confused. “Huh?”

“Your kids,” Matt repeated. “You fuss like a dad.” 

Frank chuckled. “Uh… my oldest, he’s nine. His little sister is seven. They live with their mom.”

Murdock didn’t ask any prying questions about the divorce. It was a nice change of pace. “What are their names?”

“Lisa. And Frank Junior.”

Murdock’s smile is soft and genuine. “I’m sure they’re amazing.”

Frank smiles back. “Yeah. They are.” 

Murdock elbowed him lightly. “Take after their dad, huh?”

Frank laughed, shaking his head. “Ah, not too much, I hope.”

Murdock snorted, raising his bottle. “Well. I should probably be letting you get back home, huh?”

Frank didn’t really want to. Been a long time since he’d had company. But he should. He had work in the morning. “I’ll see you around, Murdock.”

“Not if I see you first.”


	2. Chapter 2

The collision damn near knocked Frank to his feet. His hand moved. The shot went wide. 

He’d missed the bastard. 

Frank spun around with a sneer and almost laughed. That dumbass in the red suit was standing there. “What the fuck was that?”

“You were going to  _ kill _ him.” He sounded aghast under the fake, growly voice all those vigilante types used. 

“He deserved it.” Frank looked over the edge of the roof again. Bastard had gone in. “And now I’m going to have to wait for him.”

“No, absolutely not, under no circumstances,” he insisted. 

Frank scoffed. He put down the rifle, took the handgun from his belt. No movement of the head, but the tension was clear under that stupid suit. Frank put the gun right between the guy’s eyes. “What are you gonna do about it, Red?”

He didn’t even flinch. Frank had to hand it to him, he was a tough son of a bitch. “You’re not gonna kill me.”

Frank laughed. “Oh yeah? What makes you so sure?”

“You only kill men who you believe deserve it.”

“I only kill men who deserve it,” Frank corrected, sitting down. He kept the gun trained on the Devil. “Ain’t no belief about it.”

“They call you the Punisher.” 

Frank shrugged. “I don’t give a shit what they call me.”

The Devil sat down beside him. Almost absentmindedly, Frank moved the gun so he was still aiming at him. 

“You’re pointing at my calf,” he said after a long moment of silence. 

“I am. What about it?”

The Devil pursed his lips. “You know I’m wearing a bulletproof vest. So you don’t want to try to shoot me anywhere in the torso. You had your gun to my head, before, but that was just to scare me, you were never going to shoot me in the head. If you shoot me in the thigh, you might burst an artery, and if you shoot me in the arm I might come after you. So you don’t want to kill me, but you want me to be unable to follow you. That makes your best bet my calves and feet, but you can’t quite tell what my boots are made of, so you’re going calf, right?”

“That’s more or less the plan.” Frank uncaps his flask, takes a drink, offers it to the Devil. He declines with twisted lips and a shake of the head. “But only if you try to stop me.” 

“I need you to know something.” The Devil surprises Frank by putting a hand on the back of his neck. The eyes of his suit are dark, look almost like sunglasses, and Frank can’t see his eyes, but he can imagine them, burning holes right through him. “You can shoot me in the leg. You can shoot me in the goddamn head, for all I care. I am not ever going to stop coming after you, do you understand me?”

“I’m not afraid of you, asshole,” Frank growls. 

The Devil pauses, shaking his head sadly. “You should be, Frank.” 

“How do you know my name?” Frank is up on his feet but the Devil is faster, jumping down the goddamn side of the building. Frank wants to scream after him but he doesn’t want to attract any attention, heart hammering in his chest. His next words are a whisper, between himself and God. 

“How the hell did he know my name?”


	3. Chapter 3

Frank had never been a real sociable type, even less so after the war. Still, he was pretty sure he was making a record for the fastest fuck up in his career when he managed to upset Matt two steps outside of their apartment building by grabbing his elbow. 

“Don’t do that,” Matt said in a harsh tone, the only time Frank had ever heard him talk like that. 

“Sorry, I was just-” Frank took a step back. 

“No, no, it’s fine.” Matt looked sheepish, hands wringing around the red handle of his cane. “You just scared me. Warn a guy next time, yeah?”

“Sorry,” Frank repeated, relieved he hadn’t managed to majorly fuck up. “I’m gonna touch your arm now.”

“Actually, it’s better if I grab yours. It allows me to control my balance better.” Matt’s hand wrapped around Frank’s elbow. “Oh, wow, you are incredibly strong.”

Frank laughed a little. “I, uh… I was in Nam, yeah.”

Matt hummed in acknowledgement. Completely neutral - no apology, no disdain, no praise. 

Man. That felt good. 

“Did you fall again?” Frank asked. There was an ugly looking bruise blooming around the edge’s of Matt’s dark glasses. 

“Hm? Oh, my eye. I ran into a door frame.” He laughed a little. “Guess I should watch where I’m going,” he joked. 

Frank chuckled. “You ever think about getting a seeing eye dog?”

Matt shrugged. “I manage. Get a couple scrapes and bruises here and there, but I haven’t, like, fallen down an open manhole cover or anything yet.”

Frank wanted to say that it wasn’t safe just because nothing bad had happened yet, but he bit his tongue. Matt didn’t need Frank fathering over him. He was a grown man. 

“I can see more than most people think,” Matt told him, his cane sweeping the pavement in front of them. 

“Do you have partial vision or something?”

Matt smiled. “Nope. Totally blind. Some blind people can still see vague shapes, flashes of light. I’m not one of them. But people who aren’t blind tend to ignore a lot. Things you hear, things you smell… why pay attention to those, right? You can see just fine.” 

Frank chuckled. “Oh yeah? What do you see, then?”

Matt was quiet for a moment. “I know people are looking at me, because for a few feet both ahead of and behind me, their footsteps get slower and their voices get quieter. The guy at the newspaper stand, his wife thinks he’s stopped smoking, and he thinks his cologne is covering the cigarette smoke. They’re both wrong. On the second floor of the building to our left, there are two people fighting - sounds like young boys, probably brothers. Their bedroom window is open. And I’m not the only one who took a spill last night. There’s a cut on your face. A pretty bad one. It smells like blood and antiseptic.”

Frank didn’t know what to say. Hell, he might have thought Matt was making it up - he had no way to confirm or deny if there really were two brothers fighting or a smoker newspaper salesman, and most people got awkward around the disabled. 

But there  _ was _ a cut just over Frank’s eyebrow.

“Had a run-in with the masked freak. Banged my forehead against a wall.”

“What, the guy in red? What are they calling him now?” Matt sounded almost amused. 

“The Daredevil.” Frank rolled his eyes. “Just plain ‘Devil’ is better if you ask me. Who the hell goes around dressed up as a demon and expects to be taken seriously?”

Matt laughed. “Oh, he  _ doesn’t.” _

“He does! Horns and all.” 

“Well, I’m sorry to hear he split your head open.” Matt squeezed Frank’s arm. 

Frank shrugged. “I’ve had worse. Guess you aren’t a fan of the whole vigilante thing, huh? Given your line of work.” 

Matt hummed thoughtfully. “Technically, it’s my job to side with accused criminals. Whether they’re  _ actually  _ criminals or not… well. That isn’t my place to decide. I can definitely see his reasoning. I know firsthand how frustrating the justice system can be. You see something happen… well. You can call the cops, wait for them to show up, and potentially make the situation worse if they show up in time to do anything… or you can take care of it yourself.”

It wasn’t like Frank could argue. And he couldn’t tell Matt what he’d  _ really _ been doing when that crazy in the mask had attacked him. “I think he’s on a power trip.”

“Maybe,” Matt conceded. “He does scare me. But not as much as that shooter.”

“The Punisher.” Frank echoed the name disdainfully. “Stupid name.”

“Stupid name.” Matt nodded. “Still, it fits.”

“Yeah.” Frank set his jaw, sighing through clenched teeth. “Yeah, it does.” 


	4. Chapter 4

For all he put on that cool, collected persona, the Devil was a squirmer. 

Reminded Frank of the real Devil, all cool and collected until he got pinned down. The guy was starting to piss him off, so Frank wound the rope tighter around him than it needed to be. 

“You can’t just leave me in here,” he snarled up at Frank.

“Sure I can.” He wouldn’t, of course. No man deserved to die like that. If he did kill the Devil, he’d make it easy. Make it quick. 

Eventually, he stopped struggling, panting softly and leaning against the beam he’d been bound to. “You’re a real asshole. You know that, Frank?”

“Plenty of people tell me.” Frank didn’t look up from loading his gun. “How do you know my name?”

“You don’t exactly go to great pains to hide your identity.” The Devil was scared, real scared, that much was obvious. But he wasn’t even pretending to look at Frank, or the gun. Some kind of power move. Frank let him have it. “You’re not gonna kill me, Frank.”

“What makes you so sure, Red?” Frank crouched down, shoving the barrel of the Derringer into the soft underside of the Devil’s chin. “You know what’s funny about bulletproof helmets? Bullets can’t get in. But they can’t get out either.” 

The Devil didn’t even flinch. “You won’t kill me because you think that you’re Saint Peter. Don’t you, Frank? Determining who is and isn’t worthy. Killing someone who doesn’t ‘deserve’ it… that would undermine your fantasy.” 

Frank pressed the gun in harder. “You run around dressed up like a demon, think you get to talk to me about religious fantasy?”

The bastard actually laughed at him. “I guess Catholicism got its hooks in both of us pretty deep, huh, Frank?”

Frank pulled back, cracking the gun across the Devil’s cheek. It drew out a pained scream and a rivulet of red blood dripped from his mouth. 

“You’re a son of a bitch, Frank Castle.” The Devil spat blood onto the dusty floor. 

“You don’t know the half of it, Red.” Frank straightened up, leaning against the wall. “You’re Catholic, huh? Explains the costume.”

The Devil grins and his teeth are red and slimy with blood. Frank’s not a poetic guy, but the image strikes him as almost beautiful, in a deeply macabre way. “I am. Was. It comes and goes.” 

“I know what you mean.” Curious, Frank moved the gun. He still couldn’t see the Devil’s eyes, but his head didn’t follow the movement. Was he still trying to bluff Frank out? Did he really think Frank wouldn’t shoot him? Did he just not care?

“You didn’t take my mask off.” 

“I don’t care who you are, Red.” A lie. Frank wanted to know. He wanted to know how this man knew his name, wanted to know why he was so damn intent on stopping him, why the bastard didn’t just shove him off a rooftop and have done with it. 

But he wasn’t gonna learn any of that by seeing the guy’s face. 

“Yeah. Guess you wouldn’t, huh?” His words are thick with the blood in his mouth, and Frank feels an annoying pang of guilt, watching it drip down the Devil’s chin. “Makes it easier, right? You can pistol-whip some asshole in a costume, but it’s harder when you know his name. Know his face. Know who he is, that there’s someone out there who cares about him.”

Frank scoffed. “Yeah? Your family know what you get up to, Red?”

“Don’t have one. My parents are dead. And I never got married.” The Devil’s bloodied lips curled up, a pale imitation of a smile. “Got friends, though. Almost none of them know.”

“Almost,” Frank repeated thoughtfully. 

“I know a nurse. She patches me up, when I can’t go to the hospital. And when I have people I can’t bring to the hospital.”

Frank laughed bitterly. “What, you make the poor girl patch up the assholes you bludgeon half to death?”

“Something like that.” The Devil shifted under his restraints, groaning softly. “We all deserve a chance, Frank. Even me. Even you.”

“I don’t need you to proselytise to me, choir boy.” Frank jammed his gun into the Devil’s forehead. “Wonder how this thing takes point blank range.”

“So do I.”

Frank scoffed, dropped his arm, turned around. “You piss me off, you know that?”

“Yeah. I got that idea when you kidnapped me and tied me up to a rotting basement beam. But not enough to kill me, right?”

“Not yet,” Frank spat, lighting a cigarette. He couldn’t look at the Devil right now, couldn’t seen him tied up like that, blood all over his face, blending in with his stupid fucking costume.

Mercifully, the basement was quiet for a minute, except the Devil’s ragged breaths. Frank was pretty sure he’d bruised the guy’s ribs. 

Good. 

Frank was grinding the butt of his cigarette under his heel, starting to turn. 

The last thing he saw was a flash of red coming towards him. 


	5. Chapter 5

It was the damn beam. Frank had been a fool to think it’d hold him. He’d been a fool to turn around, too. 

Frank just couldn’t stop thinking about it. His face. Covered in blood. 

He’d seriously considered not going to Matt’s, still shaken up a little. But he had no idea if he could lie convincingly when Matt asked him why. Fucker always managed to poke holes in all his lies, even small ones. 

Frank’s first thought when Matt opened the door was Christ, I’m glad he can’t see. It was something he thought around Matt more often than he should. And it gave him more opportunities than he needed to stare. 

"Oh, Frank! I'm sorry, I lost track of time." Matt smiled sheepishly, pushing his hair off his sweaty forehead. 

"What in the hell have you been doing?" Frank asked. Matt is in a t-shirt and shorts. Frank has never seen him dressed down like this before, has never gotten a chance to notice that Matt isn't skinny, he's lean, limbs taut with muscle. His hands were wrapped up in white tape and he wasn't wearing his sunglasses. The skin around his eyes was mottled and scarred, and his eyes were glassy. Frank felt bad for staring at his eyes and worse for staring at his arms. 

"I was just, uh, working out. Just because I'm blind doesn't mean I shouldn't know how to throw a punch, right?" Matt laughed. 

"Right." Frank stared at the floor. 

"Would you mind if I showered really quick? Sorry, I thought I set an alarm. Must have forgotten it."

"Take your time." Frank swallowed. 

Matt left Frank alone in the living room and Frank slumped onto the couch, head in his hands. Jesus, what was wrong with him? Strange men, that was one thing. Other guys in Nam, that had been another. But Matt was his neighbor. Matt was his friend. Matt was a professional. 

Matt knew how to throw a punch. 

Frank thought about that. How did a blind man box? Would it be strange, asking Matt to spar with him? It wasn't like Frank would hurt him. 

Would Matt be able to hurt him?

"I'm back, sorry I took so long."

Frank lifted his head out of his hands. Matt was still in shorts and a t-shirt, but clean ones this time, not sticking to him with sweat. He looked good. "Didn't know you owned anything but suits."

Matt laughed, settling beside him on the couch. "Well, I have to sleep in something, Frank."

"Says who?" Frank regrets the joke once he says it, but it makes Matt smile. 

"Well, I prefer to sleep in something. That might be more accurate."

Frank nodded, watching the way the muscles moved in Matt's arms when he laid one over the back of the couch. "So. How do you…?"

"I'm not exactly a heavyweight champion or anything, Frank." Matt chuckled. "I just own a punching bag. It's a stationary target."

"So it wouldn't do you much good in a fight, is what you're saying."

Matt hummed thoughtfully, tilting his head. "Well… I've never been in a real fight. But one of my ex-girlfriends was really into martial arts, we used to spar all the time."

"How's that work?" Frank huffed out a laugh. 

Matt smiled. "Well, it's like - okay. Here." He stood up. "Come stand beside me."

Frank stood up, standing just behind Matt. 

"I can tell by the way the floorboards creak and the direction your breathing is coming from that you're actually behind me, not next to me. Which is very rude, Frank," Matt chastised with a smile. "And if you're in a boxing ring it's even easier, since the underside is mostly hollow and the ring itself is designed to be able to shift with movement. It's also a confined space. Not like how my living room is a confined space. My apartment may not be huge, but it's certainly bigger than a boxing ring."

"Not much," Frank joked. He moved slow, light on his feet, to stand in front of Matt. He took a single step towards Matt, and then he was flat on his back on the living room floor. 

Matt, the bastard, was sitting on Frank's chest, bent down with his forearm pressed over Frank's neck. "Do you know what mistake sighted people make when they fight?"

"Hm." Frank had to strain his voice past the pressure on his neck. 

"You never listen. You think because I can't see you, I don't know where you are. Really, all being blind means is that no one can sneak up behind me. If anything, it's an advantage."

Frank was going a little lightheaded. Part of it was from the pressure on his windpipe, but Matt clearly knew what he was doing, not pressing down enough to really hurt. Part of it was Matt, sitting on his chest, leaning over him with a wicked grin and his damp ginger hair messy around his face. 

This was wrong.

Matt might be stronger than he looked, but Frank still had a hundred pounds on the guy, easy. And Matt wasn't exactly trying too hard, either, just playing around. Frank put his hands on Matt's waist, planning to roll left and shove Matt to his right.

He didn't. 

"Do you have something you want to tell me, Frank?" Matt's arm left his throat, planting his hands on Frank's shoulders to balance himself. 

Frank inhaled sharply through his nose. "You're a son of a bitch, Matt Murdock."

Matt laughed. "So I've heard."

Then Matt kissed him. 


End file.
